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Back in Brave New Britain, a "virgin birth" has been announced. Well, not quite. But "parthenogenesis" is in line to make embryos for research by splitting an egg and not needing a sperm. And, moving from one-parent reproduction to a three-parent team-game, the nucleus of a normal embryo will be inserted into another egg—this time, not for experiments, but for live birth.

Face transplants raise some strange ethical issues: This is not quite the same as switching your liver or even your heart, as you will then look like the person whose face you have acquired. There are also some serious ethical issues involved in what is still a thoroughly experimental procedure. But this is no longer something out of Face/Off.

Not many people know what the 25-year-old law Bayh-Dole means to the medicine industry. In a fascinating assessment, Fortune magazine lays bare the immense consequences—some entirely unintended—of this law that enables universities and researchers to profit, sometimes hugely, from their inventions.

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Previous Life Matters columns include:

A Manufactured Womb of One's Own | The commodification of children, and an admission of stem-cell hype. (Sept. 8, 2005)

The Stem-Cell Conspiracy | The Washington Post muddles a major breakthrough in adult stem-cell research, while the U.K. marches blindly on. (Aug. 29, 2005)

Brave New Puppy | Introducing our new life ethics weblog. (Aug. 10, 2005)

Britain Leads the (Wrong) Way | Embryos to be screened for cancer risk, "danger genes." (Aug. 17, 2005)

More CT articles on bioethics are available on our Life Ethics page.

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September (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49